Heidi has been an Associate Professor of Metals and General Studies with OCAC since 1998. She has led the first year graduate critique seminar for the Applied Craft + Design Program since 2011.

As an accomplished metalsmith, Heidi has progressively explored a wide range of media in her studio practice, and has received numerous awards, fellowships and grants, including a Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) Project Grant (2010, 2007); Oregon Arts Commission (OAC) Career Development Grant (2010, 2008); a Hallie Ford Fellowship (2010), and the MacDowell Colony Fellowship (2010). She was also a finalist for a 2012 Contemporary Northwest Art Awards, Portland Art Museum. Her art residency resume includes the Anderson Ranch Art Center (June 2013), 18th St. Arts Center, Los Angeles (2011); Nes Residency, Iceland (2010), and the Beijing International Artist Platform (2010). She is a graduate of the University of Oregon, where she earned an MFA in metals. She received BFA degrees in metals and art history from the University of Kansas.

Original Writing on Critical Theory and Creative Research
Award presented by the MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research ProgramEntry submission: essay of 1,500 words or less Application deadline: Friday, May 31, 2013 Theme: On Art and Disobedience; Or, What Is an Intervention?Cash award: 5,000 USD

Winner announced by Saturday, August 31, 2013

Please note that essays over the limit will be disqualified.

The Hannah Arendt Prize in Critical Theory and Creative Research is an annual competition for those interested in the juncture of art and creative research and in the principles at the heart of the arts and humanities, including sense-based intelligence; the reality of singular, nonrepeatable phenomena; ethical vision; and consilience between inner and outer, nature and reason, thought and experience, subject and object, self and world.

Application for the prize is open to the general public. Download the PDF application and email the completed application and the essay (in a .doc or .pdf format) to ctcrprize@pnca.edu.

Explication of theme:“To disobey in order to take action is the byword of all creative spirits. The history of human progress amounts to a series of Promethean acts. But autonomy is also attained in the daily workings of individual lives by means of many small Promethean disobediences, at once clever, well thought out, and patiently pursued, so subtle at times as to avoid punishment entirely. All that remains in such a case is an equivocal, diluted form of guilt. I would say that there is good reason to study the dynamics of disobedience, the spark behind all knowledge.”
—Gaston Bachelard, Fragments of a Poetics of Fire

Intervention is an omnipresent if not ubiquitous word in contemporary discourse, but what forms does it take in the age of genetic engineering and real-time media? Is the concept a decoy or distraction in the face of futility? A cover or compensation for hopeless battles and set-ups? Is it simply working to slow down the Inevitable, a notion that in and of itself works as a major obstacle to critical thought and action? Or is it something more serious, more durable, and more dangerous? What is the relation of critique and intervention, theory and practice? And what role does art play in what Bachelard called “creative disobedience,” acts of Prometheanism “so subtle at times as to avoid punishment entirely”? Might art now comprise one of the last forms of political stealth, working in increasingly sophisticated time-based ways? What kinds of thought and action are powerful and compelling interventions today, whether one-off spectacles, sabots, monkey wrenches, sleepers, gummy bears, or Trojan Horses?

Along with Anne-Marie Oliver and Barry Sanders, Founding Co-Chairs, MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research, Pacific Northwest College of Art, the judges for 2013 includeClaire Bishop, Professor of Contemporary Art, Theory and Exhibition History, Graduate Center, The City University of New York Judith Butler, Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, The University of California, Berkeley, and Hannah Arendt Professor of Philosophy, Europäische Universität für Interdisziplinäre Studien/EGSBarbara Duden, Professor Emerita, Leibniz Universität HannoverJulia Kristeva, Professor Emerita and Head of the École doctorale Langues, Littératures, Images, Université Paris Diderot, Paris 7, and recipient of the Hannah Arendt Award for Political Thought Heike Kühn, Film Critic Martha Rosler, Artist and contributor to the Hannah Arendt Denkraum (on the occasion of Hannah Arendt’s 100th birthday)

PNCA marks the official launch of the new BFA in Writing at PNCA by welcoming three Pacific Northwest writers, Chuck Palahniuk, Tom Spanbauer, and Lidia Yuknavitch for an evening of reading and conversation in Swigert Commons on April 22 at 7:30pm. This event celebrates this new writing program chaired by associate professor and award-winning novelist Monica Drake, author of the just-published Stud Book, and Clown Girl, which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Awards.

Tom Spanbauer, founder of the Dangerous Writers workshop and author of The Man Who Fell in Love With The Moon and other novels will read from his works as will Lidia Yuknavitch, editor of Chiasmus Press and author of Dora: A Head Case and The Chronology of Water: a memoir. Chuck Palahniuk, best known for his breakout novel, Fight Club will lead a discussion of what it means to be a writer now, to pursue the writing life, to try to make a living, and to always make art with words.

“Writing is an art, a method, and a way of life,” says Monica Drake, Writing Department Chair. “To study writing is to bring shape and rigor to the very act of thinking and self expression. As we wrestle with words, we learn to tell our stories, and find enriched meaning in the world.”

Please note that the authors will not be available for book signing at this event.

About the BFA in Writing at PNCA
The author Margaret Atwood writes, “A word after a word/after a word is power.” PNCA believes there is a power in learning to craft self expression through considered use of language. To study writing is to study the very act of thinking and articulating ideas and feelings. Writing can find form in novels, poems and scholarly work, as well as in scripts, graphic novels, performance, reviews, the digital realm and other mediums. The BFA in Writing is designed to help student writers find their voice reach their potential, while offering a strong visual arts component alongside writing classes. Solving creative problems in parallel mediums develops an incisive relationship to audience, and an expansive, informed point of entry into the ongoing creative conversations.

In the BFA in Writing program, writing is taught through a variety of classes: workshops, literature seminars, writing studio courses, interdisciplinary studios like the graphic novel, and others, which grant students one-on-one time with faculty as well as exchanges within communities inside and outside the school. The program begins broadly, encouraging the study of short and long forms, poetry, prose, fiction, and nonfiction, and both narrative and associative work. This allows room for the developing writer to find his or her focus, which may be in a genre, or across genres, blending forms. As the student gains footing, there is increased room for the student to direct his or her own content under the guidance of faculty.

In a glowing article, Finally, the Bowl Gets Its Due, New York Times writer Julie Lasky delves into the exhibition Object Focus: The Bowl and its the connections between tradition, craft, and design it investigates.

In addition to highlighting MoCC Director and Chief Curator Namita Gupta Wiggers efforts to point to the bowl as an instrument of craft and as a successful design object, Lasky also notes PNCA faculty member Daniel Duford’s essay on the Object Focus: The Bowl Tumblr.

Lasky writes “Daniel Duford, a potter and printmaker, wrote more personally about a ceramic bread bowl of unknown origin that had been inherited from his wife’s great-grandmother in Puyallup, Wash.” Lasky also discusses PNCA’s BFA in Illustration program as the first people to participate in the drawing station installed in the exhibition.

The article begins by discussing a recent Northern Song dynasty bowl that went for more than $2.2 million at auction in Sotheby’s.

But the bowl, Lasky notes, is easily overlooked. In a phone conversation with Lasky, Wiggers said “we don’t talk about the bowl because it’s completely this everyday thing. We take it for granted. We know it too well.”

And thus the impetus behind Object Focus: The Bowl: to draw attention to and unpack an everyday object that is filled to the brim with thousands of years of craft and design.

Wiggers said, “When I talk to people about the bowl, it is always about something else. It’s a metaphorical conversation about ritual, like in the tea ceremony, or about the fabrication process. It’s very hard to just talk about the bowl itself. We talk around the bowl.”

Lasky discusses the Tumblr page as well, pointing out the inclusion of writers such as Mara Holt Skov and Daniel Duford. She writes, “Ms. Wiggers has capitalized on the narrative richness of bowls by inviting scholars, writers and artisans to select an example from the show and write a brief essay about it.”

Read written accounts and essay on the Object Focus The BowlTumblr here.

SPRINGBREAKHOURS

Please note the following change in building hours for the week of March 25-March 29.
Monday-Saturday 8am-10pm
Sunday-9am-10pm
The Stevens Studios and MFA studios will remain open 24/7 over the break.
The building will go back to extended hours and 7am opening times on Monday April 1.

3D Shop
There will be supervised access hours for the shops in 3D over Spring Break.
The schedule is Monday-Thursday 10-6 (Angie in the metal shop and Tyler in the wood shop) Check with Liam in the Ceramic studio for the firing schedule.

First there was Hipster Kitty. Now Craig Wheat MFA ‘09 is making t-shirts.

MFA in Visual Studies alumnus Craig Wheat had one of his drawings used as a pattern for a shirt for Mishka NYC. The image on the shirt is a recreation of a nightmare the artist had about being welded to other people to form a Human Coral Reef. But that’s not the first time his work has been replicated. Wheat’s “Hipster Kitty” meme went viral several years ago.

The Feldman Gallery + Project Space at PNCA hosts the internationally renowned arts collective Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) with an exhibition from Wednesday, March 13, 2013 through Sunday, June 2, 2013. The CAE ensemble will be on campus for events from Wednesday, March 13 – Saturday, March 16.

List of Critical Art Ensemble Events

On Saturday March 16, The Feldman Gallery + Project Space presents the Keep Hope Alive Block Party, a one day event put on by the Critical Art Ensemble.

About Keep Hope Alive Block Party
For the Block Party, CAE responds to inequitable distribution of resources with a block party acknowledging that while the majority of wealth may be in the hands of the very few, the many have a handful of remaining assets to give us pleasure including Sustenance (soup kitchen open all afternoon); Delirium (forty-ounce bottles of Miller High Life for those of age, and Big Gulps of Mountain Dew for under-agers); and Hope (raffle tickets offering big cash prizes, so that for a lucky few, economic mobility will not only be downward.)

The Block Party happens on NW 13th between NW Johnson and NW Kerney from 12 – 5pm on March 16.

Roxie McGovern ‘06 will be a featured speaker at the TEDx ConcordiaUPortland 2013 conference. She works as the executive director at Children’s Healing Art Project (CHAP). McGovern will talk about the healing power that art can bring to child and families in crisis. PNCA faculty Crystal Schenk was a featured speaker at the 2012 TEDx ConcordiaUPortland conference. Read more about McGovern on the Tedx blog.

Join us for PNCA’s 5th Annual Benefit Art Auction Friday, February 22 at 6 pm at Vestas Wind Systems (1417 NW Everett). For the full catalog of available works in the auction and to purchase tickets in advance, please visit our website. Tickets to the PNCA Benefit Art Auction are $100 each.

PNCA in partnership with Museum of Contemporary Craft brings the co-directors of Design Museum Boston, Sam Aquillano and Derek Cascio, to Portland to talk about their wide-ranging collaborations with colleagues and institutions such as the exhibition Retail: Retell. Recycle. Rethink on sustainable marketing, a competition to design street seating for Boston’s booming Fort Point Channel, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to use design to build community and increase the livability of the South Boston Waterfront, home to the city’s burgeoning Innovation District. Their visit culminates with a Portland design community town hall, Design as Common Ground, at Portland Monthly’s Bright Lights Monday, January 8 at 6 pm at Jimmy Mak’s.

Binary Lore, a unique two-institution exhibition curated by the curator of PNCA’s Feldman Gallery + Project Space, Mack McFarland, and Shannon Stratton of Threewalls in Chicago has been selected by John Motley as one of Artforum‘s picks. Motley writes, “…in Binary Lore, their dissimilar work forms a cohesive demonstration of how cultural categorizations based on simplistic binary oppositions—for Fake, male and female, horror and lust; for MSHR, nature and technology, craft and code—are fast becoming the stuff of modern myth.”

What’s new on the west side of the Main Building? That’s the Pedal Garden, a new bike storage sculpture by David Boekelheide MFA ‘10 in memory of Tracey Sparling and celebrating PNCA’s cycling community. President Tom Manley will dedicate the Student Pedal Garden on January 25 at 11:30 am in the Swigert Commons of PNCA at 1241 NW Johnson Street. Read more about the background of the project in the recent press release.

Faculty emeritus Harry Widman and his wife, Mardy, were profiled over the weekend in the Oregonian where David Stabler called Widman, 83, “one of Oregon’s great painters, a modernist of bold human forms, influential, gregarious, gentlemanly, an admired teacher whose words of advice could change a student’s career.” Painter Laura Ross-Paul, who is hosting an exhibition of both of the Widman’s work at Golden Gallery in Beaverton, called Widman, “one of the gods” along with Mel Katz and Jay Backstrand.

Portland Monthly magazine sponsors a conversation with PNCA President Tom Manley and architect Brad Cloepfil on Monday, January 14 at 6 pm. Art Schooled Urbanism: PNCA and the Rebirth of the North Park Blocks is part of the magazine’s Bright Lights conversations series hosted by editor in chief Randy Gragg. The event is at Jimmy Mak’s, 221 NW 10th Avenue.

As Monthly notes, “For decades, Portland’s verdant Park Blocks have ended their northern reach at a fenced parking lot with all the life of a dead-end alley. But come September, a transformation will begin as one of the city’s most august and imposing edifices—the 511 Building—becomes home base to its fastest-growing creative institution: the Pacific Northwest College of Art.”

The event promises, “a tour of the vision for the college and the rebirth of the North Park Blocks with the project’s leaders, PNCA president Tom Manley and renowned architect Brad Cloepfil. The duo argue the new building—to be dubbed the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design—will be a booster rocket, not just for the college, but for the neighborhood and the city, adding a critical link to the so-called “Creative Corridor” stretching from the Ace Hotel and Wieden & Kennedy to the University of Oregon’s White Stag Building, and standing at the doorstep of the future redevelopment of the nine-block US Post Office site.”

PNCA alumni Reta Larson and Michael Pratt and the handcrafted, artisanal tile business they built from scratch, Pratt & Larson Ceramics, are featured in a recent profile in the Oregonian. Over 30 years ago, a trip to Mexico inspired the two artists to begin making handmade tiles. Today their business, which was one of the first of its kind in the U.S., has more than a hundred showrooms and nearly a hundred employees.

The Regional Arts and Culture Council announced today that PNCA is to receive a grant to support a project by internationally renowned arts collective Critical Art Ensemble (CAE). The project, Critical Art Ensemble: A Monument to Income Inequality is scheduled for Spring 2013 from March 7—May 26, 2013. Teaming with NYU economist Edward Wolff (a specialist in wealth distribution) and mathematician David Sommer, CAE will produce a proportional scale diagram representing relative wealth based on population quintiles. A banner will illustrate relative wealth of each quintile of the bottom 80% (scale of 1 inch = $500) at approximately 50 feet high, with the bottom 20% represented by a 2-foot-deep hole in the ground (representing those who have debt). The top 20% owns such as an astonishing percentage of total wealth, it cannot be represented on the same banner, but will be represented 450 feet in the air (viewers may visit this height via helicopter). The exhibit will feature a publication edited by theorist Brian Holmes.

Letterpress printer and bookmaker, Amos Kennedy, lectures this week, December 12 at 6:30 pm at the Bison Building at the invitation of the MFA in Applied Craft and Design program and PNCA’s Printmaking Department. Kennedy is the subject of the documentary Proceed and Be Bold. On UNTITLED, find Three Questions with Amos Kennedy.